Conventionally, techniques are proposed in which a provider who provides merchandise or a service and a receiver who receives it do negotiation (remote negotiation) through various communication lines without actually facing each other (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2002-183583 and 2002-215944).
These prior arts describe the basic concept of remote negotiation but do not sufficiently disclose any detailed system configuration for implementation.
In the above remote negotiation systems, generally, a salesperson and a customer negotiate without actually facing each other. During the negotiation, the communication means used imposes restrictions on communication between them. Hence, for example, when the service desired by the customer is specified by the remote negotiation, and accordingly, the salesperson side prepares so-called documents necessary for commercial transactions, including estimates, purchase orders, and contracts, there is no means for providing each prepared commercial transaction document to the customer.
In the conventional remote negotiation system, to quickly provide the prepared commercial transaction document to the customer, the document information of the commercial transaction document is transmitted by using a communication means such as e-mail. However, it is relatively easy to tamper document information. Hence, it is not preferable to easily transmit the document information of a commercial transaction document that contains the service providing price and the like to many unspecified customers.
In purchasing merchandise, one customer as the party concerned generally makes a decision alone. However, for merchandise such as a car, not only the customer as the party concerned but also a plurality of direct or indirect customers, including acquaintances and family, are often involved. When this point is taken into consideration, the conventional remote negotiation system is very convenient because it allows face-to-face negotiation between a salesperson and a customer, who are not physically in the same location but at remote sites, so that a plurality of persons can participate in the negotiation without physically gathering in the same site at the same time. However, the conventional remote negotiation system has no means for providing a commercial transaction document such as an estimate to the customer, as described above. It is not preferable to easily transmit the document information to the plurality of customers involved in the remote negotiation.